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Forum rules
This forum is meant for general questions about the usability of OJS from an everyday user's perspective: journal managers, authors, and editors are welcome to post questions here, as are librarians and other support staff. We welcome general questions about the role of OJS and how the workflow works, as well as specific function- or user-related questions.

What to do if you have general, workflow or usability questions about OJS:

1. Read the documentation. We've written documentation to cover from OJS basics to system administration and code development, and we encourage you to read it.

2. take a look at the tutorials. We will continue to add tutorials covering OJS basics as time goes on.

3. Post a question. Questions are always welcome here, but if it's a technical question you should probably post to the OJS Technical Support subforum; if you have a development question, try the OJS Development subforum.

There's a thread about installing on Vista here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3269. While it doesn't tackle XP specifically, you may find some good points. We don't do extensive testing on XP or Vista, but users have reported success in running our software on these platforms. I would suggest going over the tutorials and help documents discussed in that thread as closely as possible.

Thanks for the reply. It seems it's not so much about XP or Vista but what happens on the server side and how GoDaddy handles MySQL 5. An especially important document, somewhat buried in the site, is the following: http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/README. I followed as closely as possible the instructions there as well as the instructions regarding GoDaddy's MySQL 5 in viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3119&p=12448#p12448 to no avail so far. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong.

I'd like to review, if you don't mind, the steps. Would be great if you can let me know what I might be doing wrong.

1. I downloaded and unzipped the ojs package. Then I uploaded it to my site hosted by GoDaddy. I realize an error might have occurred by not uploading every single file needed. I did my best to double check and so far everything looks good in that respect.

2. As required, I used CHMOD to make the file 'config.inc.php' as well as folders 'public' and 'cache' (with the folders it contains) writable.

3. Then, I modified the part of file 'config.inc.php' containing the database settings

At this point I have no clue as to what might have gone wrong. If what I'm doing is correct (provided all the ojs files are properly uploaded, as I think they are), there may be something peculiar about the GoDaddy's MySQL 5. First, however, I have to be sure that the above steps are the correct ones.

1. restore your config.inc.php to the original (copy config.TEMPLATE.inc.php to it) and make sure its permissions are set properly;2. open the newly-restored config file and change one thing only: set disable_path_info to ON;3. point your browser to your OJS directory -- NOT to install.php -- where you will hopefully now see the OJS install page;4. fill out the information as necessary, including the MySQL 5 hostname info as well;5. Try an automatic install.

Try this, and let me know where exactly you hit a snag. You may also find it easier to create a database before you install, if you have access to your MySQL server via phpMyAdmin or another tool -- sometimes, these service providers don't allow web programs to create databases themselves, and they also like to append their own suffixes to any created database, which can be somewhat unpredictable. If you do this, you will have to uncheck the "Create new database" option on the install page, and fill in the already-created database name.

Thanks a lot. With your help I was able to get into the installation page. Now, the problem appears to be the creation of a folder for the uploaded files. Curiously, I'm unable to make a folder in Windows XP non-read-only. I'm un-checking the read-only property of the folder but the XP keeps restoring it as a read-only. This causes the following error message:

'The directory specified for uploaded files does not exist or is not writable.'

This, unfortunately, is where we may not be able to provide much help: we don't have Windows boxes to troubleshoot the vagaries of installing on XP/Vista etc., and issues like these aren't solvable on the OJS side. Have you tried searching the net for users with similar problems? I believe a lot of different types of software packages (incl. web packages like Wordpress, Drupal, etc.) would need similar permissions set, and users must have encountered this issue before.

zzitronweiss wrote:Curiously, I'm unable to make a folder in Windows XP non-read-only. I'm un-checking the read-only property of the folder but the XP keeps restoring it as a read-only. '

I think i can provide a little more help on that part since i've worked a lot with windows boxes now, that is not the proper way to change permissions on a windows box, you need to change permissions from your "Security" tab on your folder's properties. There your need to add the users that IIS uses, i think it was something like IUSR or IIS_USRS or both. On there give write permissions to those users.

In case you can't find the security tab on your folders properties wich is very common on a non-domain box. You will need to do the following:Go to: Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Local Security Policy\Security Optionsand there set the "Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts" to "Classic - Local users authenticate as themselves"

Go to: Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Local Security Policy\Security Optionsand there set the "Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts" to "Classic - Local users authenticate as themselves"

Unfortunately all we can do on this end is provide suggestions, as we don't administer Windows servers -- Richard, your contributions here are appreciated -- but I would suggest trying to place the files directory in the root of one of your drives (e.g. c:/ojs_files) and following Richard's instructions above. This will help eliminate a few possible problems, e.g. quotation issues around spaces in filenames, and inherited permissions problems.

I agree, Richard's suggestions are great and jmacgreg really helped me to get past the substantial sticky point of not being able to reach the installation page. Obviously, I'm still not doing something right but I'll try to do my best because I really like the ojs idea.

Go to: Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Local Security Policy\Security Optionsand there set the "Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts" to "Classic - Local users authenticate as themselves"

but it didn't help, unfortunately. I also tried the command

attrib -r -s c:\[name of folder]

from the above link and that wasn't helpful either.

After you did that, you still wasn't unable to see the Security tab on the properties window of the folder you were trying to change permissions to?remember that step is only to make the Security tab visble, after you do that you still need to try and change permissions to the folder...tell us, what failed?